It's a MONSTER SMASH! Melee attacks, new enemies, and more in Don't Die, Minerva!'s latest update!

Update #4 is a goodie bag of new content, gameplay improvements, and bug fixes!

We hope this message finds you well. This is a tough time for everyone, and our team is grateful to report that we are safe and healthy with our families at home. We're still able to operate, so we'll keep doing our jobs. If we can provide a bit of entertainment for some of you out there, we see that as doing our part.

Our 4th content update for Don't Die, Minerva! launches today, Friday March 27th, for Steam PC and Xbox One, and should be available by the time you read this.

As we announced back in January, we have exciting plans on our roadmap for Minerva, and today we're rolling out one of the biggest new features: Abilities.

Until now, Minerva has only directly wielded one category of weapon, flashlights, and has otherwise relied on her Friendlies to battle ghosts. In the interest of adding depth and variety to combat, we've created 5 Abilities (including a default melee Flashlight Smash) that Minerva can perform in the midst of combat. At intervals you'll find special new rooms in the dungeon that will allow you to swap out your equipped Ability and try something new.

Speaking of combat, we've also made some major changes on that front. Not only have we done a great deal of balancing, tweaking, and fixing, but we've completely overhauled our spawning system and added a whole new class of enemies to the mix.

As we've said before, our original vision for the game was to imagine what it would be like if you could compress the entire Diablo experience into a single hour (well, maybe two hours). Of course there are implications in terms of loot delivery and game structure (hence the rogue-lite approach), but we realized that we were falling a bit short in terms of combat feel. We want a big part of the fun to be putting together a build that allows you to smash your way through packs of enemies, and have the satisfaction of seeing massive carnage on the screen.

We've done a great deal of work to try to achieve that feel. The result is definitely a milestone along the way, not the final result, but we like where it is heading and we hope you will too!

There's a lot more in this update, including a heap of new loot affixes, bug fixes, and general polish. You can read about it below. We can't wait to hear what you think about it, so let us know on Twitter!

New Stuff!

Minerva's Abilities
Flashlight Smash (default)
Baseball Bat (Physical)
Hoop of Fire (Flame)
Electro-leap (Voltaic)
Hockey Freeze (Ice)
New Fodder Enemies
Eyeball
Skull
Book
Wax
Rat
Roach
New Enemy Art:
Ranged Shielder (replaces Shielded Sheet Ghost)
Melee Shielder (replaces Shielded Ghoul)
New Enemy Death Ragdoll System
New proximity-based enemy spawning system
New Affixes
Bonus Crit Chance Vs Burning
Bonus Crit Multiplier Vs Burning
Bonus Crit Chance Vs Chilled
Bonus Crit Multiplier Vs Chilled
Guaranteed Crit On Frozen
Coin Spawn On Bomb Explosion
Mod Spawn On Frozen Shatter
Increased Legendary Friendlies
NoFriendlyDeployCost
Bonus Flashlight Damage From Ice Equipment
Guaranteed Flashlight Crit After Dash
Bonus Voltaic Damage While Moving
Flashlight Attack Speed When Stationary
Reduced Damage From Elites And Bosses
Increased Damage When Full Health
Guaranteed Crit When Low Health

Balance

Room count per dungeon level revised
Loot tables revised
Vendor drops revised
Essence unlock costs and unlock order revised
Fewer legendaries
More variety of treasure rooms – not guaranteed to get 3 items from every treasure room
Reduced enemy damage across the board
Rebalanced enemy health based on their roles
Reduced likelihood of getting gear that is above the current dungeon floor's level, removed the chance to get gear below the current dungeon floor's level
Reduced overall drop rates of gear, changed likelihood of various types of loot depending on the source
Tuned damage for all flashlights and friendlies
Extended base lifespan of the Bee friendly
Tuned energy consumption for flashlights
Reduced time it takes for enemies to spawn and become active
Reduced range of most friendlies and flashlights
Disabled touch damage for most enemies
Increased health drops
Increased Essence Crystal drops

Polish and Improvements

Adjusted lighting schemes for levels 2 and 3 to make them more distinct
Removed mouse-based click-to-move navigation – LMB now executes Minerva's Ability.
Visual pass on Voltaic-themed rooms
Visual pass on Ice-themed rooms
Lighting pass on Flame-themed rooms
Reduced health bar size based on enemy size
Revised behavior for melee enemies to keep them in closer proximity of Minerva (to make her melee abilities more viable)
Elevator doors that lead to a boss fight now have a special visual designation
Ram Bat now has dangly legs
Player movement speed is reduced while firing flashlight
New boss battle music
New props and flooring

Bug Fixes

Fixed affix descriptions not wrapping in inventory
Fixed a bug with affixes applied to Physical Necklaces
Fixed a bug where some enemies could get stuck if they didn't perceive Minerva immediately upon spawning
Fix for crashing on creep movement component moving through doors
Fix for camera lagging between rooms
Fix for bad camera plane assignment when quickly hopping between rooms
Fix for enemies automatically acquiring Minerva as a target regardless of their perception range